Via beloved commentor SiubhanDuinne. Hillary Clinton has an excellent media team supporting her.
And for comic relief, an inspiration to all us chair-rooted bloggers, from the Washington Post:
… Wombats are epic burrowers. Their warrens can be 10 feet deep, 16 feet long, and include up to 50 entrances. What’s more, a wombat may use up to 10 different burrows within its home range. With all that subterranean infrastructure, the wombat would much prefer to duck inside a hole than stand and fight with a dingo. The only catch is wombats are kind of chubby, weighing up to 80 pounds, which means those burrows have to be sort of large.
So what prevents a predator from plunging down the hobbit hole after a wombat? Oh, only one of the most formidable fannies in the animal kingdom.
“A wombat’s rump is very tough,” says Alyce Swinbourne, a PhD candidate at the University of Queensland. “Their dermal shield is essentially four fused back bones or plates covered in cartilage, fat, thick skin, and fur.”…
… All of that gristle is the wombat’s primary defense against dingoes and other predators. The wombat simply dives into its burrow and plugs up the end with its caboose. The predator can claw and bite at the wombat’s backside all it wants, but those buns of steel protect it from any significant harm.
There’s even evidence that a wombat dermal shield can be used as an offensive weapon, a la Captain America. It’s thought that when a predator becomes too persistent, the wombat can slam its butt against the roof or walls of the burrow and literally crush the skull of its enemy…
Apart from hoping that ‘Sir Diermahl Shielde’ shows up as a minor character in next season’s Game of Thrones, what’s on the agenda as we wrap up the week?
Friday Morning Open Thread: An Inspiration to Us AllPost + Comments (226)